A professional jazz singer is now at the helm of Colorado Springs Youth Symphony Association.
Deborah Liles took over as executive director this month, filling the position that Keven Stewart left this year, after serving in the role since 2015.
“I wanted a job I could use my experience in,” Liles said. “I’ve had so many years in music education, business and working with nonprofits. I wanted something that encompassed all of that. Something I don’t want to parlay into another position, but to live out in my career and something I can really make a difference in.”
Her first orders of business include working on financial sustainability and getting the message about the youth symphony out into the community.
“I’ve worked with a lot of professionals, and these young musicians blew me away,” she said. “I want to root this into the community and regionally as well. This could be a nationally recognized program.”
The nonprofit was founded in 1980 to help musically develop junior high students in Colorado Springs School District 11. Seventy musicians gave one performance in the first season.
Nowadays, about 350 young musicians from the Pikes Peak region audition every year for the nine performing ensembles, including Pikes Peak Wind Symphony, Pinnacle Jazz, Ascent Big Band and Colorado Springs Youth Symphony, the flagship group. About 150 students enroll every year in the Mozart String Project, which offers beginning string instruction.
“I want to do as much as I can to lead the organization to new and greater heights and develop the young musicians to their full potential,” Liles said.
After earning a bachelor’s in theater and music performance and education from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va., Liles founded The Singers Studio in 1998, a youth music education nonprofit that she ran until 2022.
Liles has sung around the country in renowned jazz venues, including The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and Jazz at Lincoln Center and festivals like the Hampton Jazz Festival. And though she’s stepping back from performing professionally, that doesn’t mean she’s given up singing for fun. When she and her husband lived in the Springs from 2011 to 2016, she performed at The Broadmoor and around Denver, and intends to jam in the Springs, perhaps even with the youth symphony on a tune or two.
She discovered her love for singing as a child, when she snuck out to her parents’ car to listen to a Janis Joplin 8-track.
“My life was changed,” Liles said. “My parents were so mad I started the car, but they knew I was craving music and singing. I got into Tina Turner and Helen Reddy. They introduced me to Ella Fitzgerald and Manhattan Transfer. It was over, I knew what I wanted to do.”
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